If a group of United States citizens trekked to another country, formed an organization called “The Race,” which demanded open borders, unfettered immigration and citizenship, billions of dollars for bilingual education, health care, housing, job and wage guarantees, and anti-discrimination protection, they would likely soon be jailed or deported in a display of righteous sovereign indignation. But the National Council of La Raza engages in all these activities in the United States, and it receives taxpayer dollars to help promote its radical views.
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is a member of La Raza. That membership and her own statements have led to many challenges to her suitability for the High Court. Critics of the organization and its goals have frequently been labeled as racists, but that didn’t stop former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R.-Colo.) from calling La Raza a leftist radical group “a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses.”
La Raza, founded in 1968 by Raul Yzaguirre, takes its name from “La Raza Cosmica,” a phrase coined by Mexican scholar Jose Vasconcelos. The English translation, and the first definition found in Spanish/English dictionaries, for “la raza” is “the race.” Contrary to La Raza’s contention that the phrase means “the people,” or “the community,” the Spanish for those phrases are “la gente,” and “la comunidad.”
In 2005, La Raza received $15.2 million in federal grant money for charter schools and get-out-the-vote campaigns and in 2006 got another $4 million in congressional earmarks for housing reform. The organization’s financial statements for 2008 show that it received another $5.1 million in federal grants, and holds assets worth $97.4 million. La Raza has received more than $30 million from the federal government since 1996.
The Council of La Raza arranged to have its voice included in congressional hearings by House and Senate leaders and garnered an extra $4 million in federal tax funds earmarked by an anonymous senator in 2007 while continuing to lobby for open borders, driver’s licenses for illegals, and amnesty leading to citizenship for all illegal immigrants in the country.
Many of Mexico’s leading politicians encourage the takeover of sovereign U.S. property, and La Raza encourages those statements, while offering advice about avoiding the terms “illegals” and “amnesty.” Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon told Mexicans in a state of the nation address that “Where there is a Mexican, there is Mexico.” In 1995, President Ernesto Zedillo told a group of U.S. citizens of Hispanic descent in Dallas that “You are Mexicans, Mexicans who live North of the border,” suggesting they owed a higher allegiance to Mexico than the United States. Zedillo brought a 1997 La Raza gathering in Chicago to its feet in applause when he said that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders. All those statements accord with the accusations of the colonialism that the U.S. is constantly accused of pursuing by its enemies.
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